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Ah well! Movies whose two halves are as different as chalk from cheese have become quite frequent of late: the trend in today’s times probably began with Kyun! Ho Gaya Na… way back in 2004 and we must be having at least a couple of films each year since then! But the key part is: which half is better? If it is the first half, then it’s a sure-shot recipe for disaster. Otherwise, it can be a good thing.
And Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri fits right into this slot, with a title that probably indicates that reversal! The first half is full of eye-filling locales (DOP Anil Mehta’s expertise in filming Croatia), GenZee-appealing modern living (including a male and female sharing cabins on a yacht and later hitting the hay on a comfy bed, a gay couple, and lavishly shot noisome Vishal-Sheykhar songs with functional lyrics and junior artistes, and formulaic ‘today’ romance).
The latter goes the Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge-and-many-other-romances way along with tropes like the wrong man almost getting the bride, Karan Johar formula of multiple old Hindi film songs, either as originals or re-created, a medical situation (unlike Dharmendra’s character in KJo’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahanii, Jackie Shroff survives here!) and ostentatious weddings.
We get an inkling that this romantic dramedy is not a mere empty-headed rom-com with an explosive line pre-interval, where the heroine, Roomi (Ananya Panday) tells her man, Rey (Kartik Aaryan) that she can marry him only if and when her ex-army father (Jackie Shroff) dies!
And why is that? Simply because her sister Jia (Chandni Bhabhda) is set to wed her boyfriend Sukhi (Mohit Nehra) and migrate to Canada with him. You see, the family is based in Agra and her father has the habit of sleepwalking still and cannot be safely left alone. The one-time Colonel will not agree to being uprooted from his home and home country and will not want to come to the US where Rey, along with mother Pinky (Neena Gupta) runs a high-end wedding planners’ business.
So, the spoke in their romantic wheel (their introduction to each other has been rather stressful for Roomi and cockily pleasant for Rey) is something that needs repair. And single mother Pinky, deserted by her husband ages ago, insists that Rey does not forget his girl and let go of “the best partner he can possibly get” because of such a reason.
The film traipses merrily on its light rom-com path with an unconventional climactic message-laden twist, and while you may think it is merely pleasurable to watch a vacuous rom-com because of the eye-location candy of the first one-hour-plus, it settles into a fairly enjoyable affair with a dollop of seriousness later.
Yes, there are false alarms, like Rey trying to sabotage Jia’s wedding by bringing in her ex-boyfriend who stays very near and not in far-off Canada, and the Colonel agreeing to move to the US with Rey and Roomi, but they fizzle off (the first one quite hurriedly) as the message this film gives would have become meaningless had both these contretemps had been allowed to happen.
The performances are even, Kartik enjoying his cocky and sometimes nonplussed Rey while Ananya Panday essays Roomi with conviction. Jackie Shroff is again from the Army, though of a different timber, as in Tanvi—The Great, while Neena Gupta rocks as the ever-young-at-heart and pragmatic Pinky. From the rest, Sapna Sand makes a delightfully lusty aunt who drools over Rey and his muscles while being married to a plump husband (Tiku Talsania)! The rest are okay.
The use of the old songs, a Dharma staple now for over a decade, is especially welcome here in view of the cacophonous and disturbingly mediocre new songs with very done-to-death lyrics (Kumaar and Anvita Dutt Guptan). The background score (Hitesh Sonik) is overdone in both presence and volume.
Technically smart, this is director Sameer Sanjay Vidwan’s second Hindi venture after the very-average Satyaprem Ki Katha, and a string of light Marathi movies—overall, his work is a shade above average here, helped by the scale of production and the Dharma leitmotif.
The film’s script (Karan Shrikant Sharma) works on the whole despite the loose and too lengthy first half. The idea clearly is to present a familiar rom-com with an unconventional gender-equality statement in the end. And yes, K3G style, it’s all about loving your parents—and also about them loving you!
Rating: ***
Dharma Productions’ & Namah Pictures’ Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri Produced by: Karan Johar, Adar Poonawalla, Apoorva Mehta, Bhumika Tewari, Shareen Mantri Kedia & Kishor Arora Directed by: Sameer Sanjay Vidwans Written by: Karan Shrikant Sharma Music: Viju Shah & Vishal-Sheykhar Starring: Kartik Aaryan, Ananya Panday, Jackie Shroff, Chandni Bhabhda, Tiku Talsania, Grusha Kapoor, Lokesh Mittal, Sapna Sand, Raghav Binani, Gaurav Pandey, Mohit Nehra, Kabir Jai Bedi, Archi Mishra, Afnan Fazli, Pankhuri Gidwani, Abhishek Kumar & others
